11 Comments
A definite noun in English takes the definite article the, and an indefinite noun takes the indefinite articles a or an. As far as indefinite nouns are concerned, things are very similar in Swedish. The indefinite articles are en and ett. A neuter noun takes ett and a common noun takes en.
There really is no "the" word in Swedish. In singular, definite forms are made by adding the indefinite article to the end of the word.
-En hund = a dog.
-Hunden = the dog.
-Ett brev = a letter.
-Brevet = the letter.
You can basically think of Swedish and Danish (as well as Norwegian) as dialects of the same language. They are mutually intelligible to a high degree, although Swedish/Danish differ more than Swedish/Norwegian with regards to pronunciation.
I thought so, it's just the translation for 'en' comes up as 'the'. Probably a beta mistake. Thanks
I'm fairly sure that "ett" and "en" both mean "a/an" and the gender of the word decides which you use (e.g "en hund" is "a dog" and "ett bord" is "a table"). When you want to say "the", it goes onto the end of the word ("hunden" would be "the dog"). Sorry if that's a bit confusing - I'm new to this myself!
Is "en" a/an for masc & fem nouns, and "ett" for neuter ones, like de/het in Dutch?
en is common gender and ett is neuter gender. There's no rule for when it's ett and when it's en, although most words are en-words if you have to guess
